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What does Google say about rewards for reviews?
Google is strict. The review policy prohibits offering incentives, such as discounts, gifts or money, in exchange for reviews. That applies not just to positive reviews, but to soliciting reviews with a reward in general. Reviews created that way can be removed, and structural abuse can affect your Business Profile. The underlying logic is simple: Google wants reviews to reflect customers' genuine experience, not a transaction. A bought review pollutes the system all users rely on. The full rules are in Google review policy and guidelines.
Important detail: this also applies to subtler forms. A prize draw where only those who leave a review can enter falls under it just as much as a direct discount. What matters is the link between reward and review, not the form.
And what does the law say?
Alongside Google's policy there is consumer law. Misleading consumers is prohibited, and a review picture inflated with rewards can count as misleading, certainly if you do not disclose that the reviews were incentivized. In Europe the regulation around fake and steered reviews has tightened in recent years. Do not oblige a customer and do not conceal that something was offered in return, or you touch not just Google's rules but the law. This is not legal advice for your specific situation, but the direction is clear: the more the reward colors the verdict, the bigger the risk.
What is allowed, then?
The safe route is: actively ask for an honest review, without tying a reward to it. You may remind customers, send an invitation, offer a QR code and make it easy. You may also internally encourage your team to consistently ask for reviews. What you should not do is make the review dependent on something the customer gets. The distinction: you do not reward giving feedback, you only lower the threshold for doing it. How to do that at scale without incentives is in how to structurally get more reviews.
A gray area that often comes up: can you give something to everyone who gives feedback, positive or negative, regardless of content? This is less black-and-white, but Google's policy advises against this too, and the risk that it is seen as an incentive remains. My advice: do not do it. The return is small and the risk of removed reviews or a damaged profile is not worth it.
Why is the safe route also the smarter one?
Because rewarded reviews undermine your foundation, even if you do not get caught. Reviews work because people trust them as genuine experiences. As soon as you buy them, you get reviews from people who mainly wanted the reward, not from people who had something to say. Those reviews are often short, vague and overly positive, and exactly that vagueness makes them worthless to the next customer, who is looking for real details. So you pay for reviews that do not convince.
The sustainable approach is boring but effective: ask consistently, at the right moment, of satisfied customers, and let the quality of your work do the convincing. That delivers reviews that are accurate, stay up and actually bring in new customers. How to recognize and deal with other people's fake reviews is a related topic you will find in spotting and dealing with fake reviews.
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